Synopsis

SpongeBob begins the episode by failing the last boating exam of the year which ends after he runs over the French Narrator. Mrs. Puff tells him that he hit another pedestrian, so he gets a 6 out of 600. Mrs. Puff, tired of administrating boating exams for SpongeBob, makes SpongeBob take an extra credit exam, where SpongeBob has to write about one thing he learned in boating school. SpongeBob cannot decide, gets nervous, and starts having a nervous breakdown. But Mrs. Puff, completely tired of SpongeBob, lets him pass anyway.

After SpongeBob leaves, Mrs. Puff considers that she has done the wrong thing, and starts feeling guilt. Luckily, she knows that he does not yet have a boat to drive. Later when Mrs. Puff gets home, she opens the door to find SpongeBob and his parents are inside with a huge cake yelling "Surprise!" Mrs. Puff, surprised, starts feeling guilty again when SpongeBob's parents thank her for finally teaching their son how to drive. Then, SpongeBob and Mrs. Puff get a surprise when they see that SpongeBob's parents bought him a brand new boatmobile. Surprised, SpongeBob faints into the cake. SpongeBob's parents take him home. Mrs. Puff realizes she needs to cover this up before anyone figures out she let him skip through boating school.

Mrs. Puff screaming after SpongeBob is revealed to be the radio.

Later, SpongeBob's parents tuck him into his bed and tell him that he cannot drive anywhere that night. When his parents are gone home, he sneaks out his bedroom window, gets into the car, and falls asleep. Not long after, Mrs. Puff hi-jacks SpongeBob's car and steals it. SpongeBob then wakes up constantly saying "You're not gonna get away with stealing my car" and him and Mrs. Puff start to fight.

Mrs. Puff drives through various obstacles that hinder SpongeBob (including cheese graters and educational television), but he catches up to her and two police officers see the commotion from their police car. Then, SpongeBob reveals to himself the thief is Mrs. Puff, the car then crashes into the police car. SpongeBob and Mrs. Puff are talking in the Bikini Bottom jail where Mrs. Puff is being held for a short term, Mrs. Puff apologizes to SpongeBob and says she shouldn't have passed him because he wasn't ready and SpongeBob thinks he has to give his license back, but Mrs. Puff tells him another driving teacher, Mrs. Flounder is starting a new driving class, but SpongeBob tells her she is the only one who can teach him and the warden will let her go early if she gives him free driving lessons.

The fourth wall is broken when the French Narrator is run over by SpongeBob at the beginning of the episode.

SpongeBob and his parents hold a surprise party for Mrs. Puff at her house. When Mrs. Puff enters, a small picture of her standing at the door in the same shot can be seen. In addition, the same picture is seen within this picture. This is an example of a recursive image, one image that is repeated infinitely within itself.

When Mrs. Puff gives SpongeBob his driver's license, he licks it and comments "It tastes just like I dreamt it would." Incidentally, he dreams he is holding a drivers license and licks it in "Sleepy Time."

In the Croatian dub, the episode name is "Ništa zabadava" translating to "Nothing for Free."

If looked upon closely, SpongeBob has written on his paper, "What I learned in Boating School is how drive" which is 9 words long, it may be why SpongeBob said it wasn't finished yet.

Although SpongeBob is seen coming out of the radio slot in the car, earlier on in the episode this same radio is shown (when Mrs. Puff is first stealing the boat) it still had a SpongeBob-like appearance before the event occurred.

This is the second time Mrs. Puff goes to jail. The first was in "Hall Monitor."

MY LEG: SpongeBob runs over the people having a birthday party in Mrs. Puff's fantasy.

Apparently, Mrs. Puff has given a student a drivers license before, and it ended in mayhem, like SpongeBob, as she said "I'll have to move to a new town, open a new boating school, with a new name! No. Not again."

A scribbled out word that says "Pat" can be seen at the bottom of SpongeBob's paper. This may be a reference to SpongeBob's best friend Patrick Star.

The radio station that SpongeBob hosted was called "K.R.U.D." (Crud)

In the Crime and Funishment book/Cine-Manga version of this episode, the scene between SpongeBob being kicked out of the boat and Mrs. Puff turning on the SpongeBob radio was cut out for some reason.

It is the first and, so far, only time where the French Narrator is physically seen.

This one of a few episodes where an air raid siren can be heard blaring during a time of chaos and/or destruction. The other episodes where this happens are "Valentine's Day" and "Wormy."

This is the first appearance of the exterior of the Bikini Bottom Jail. It looks different than it does in later appearances. Considering that it looks older than it does in later episodes, it might have been renovated into what appears later in the series.

After SpongeBob and his parents leave her house, Mrs. Puff says, "I gotta move out of town and change my name!...No, not again." This implies that she has actually done so in the past which means that Mrs. Puff might not even be her real name.

The "IM-RDY" license plate from this episode reappears in SpongeBob's garage in the episode "Sharks vs. Pods" when he is getting ready to fight.

Although, the license plate colors are different in both appearances.

Errors

SpongeBob's wallpaper on his room looks different than usual.

In the scene where the cops look at the boat, it is downhill, but when the boat comes towards them it goes off a cliff. When it focuses on the cops again, it is back downhill, making the boat look like it got into the air from nowhere.

Even though it is the final boating school exam for the year, SpongeBob says that he will see Mrs. Puff next Tuesday. However, it is possible it was the last Tuesday of the year.

There are candles on top of SpongeBob's bedposts that are lit. When SpongeBob's mom turns the lights out in his room, the candles go out too.

In this episode, SpongeBob's room is missing his alarm clock and the top part of his bed.

Boaty is much wider than Mrs. Puff's front door, though it still ends up in Mrs. Puff's house. It's possible that Boaty got into Mrs. Puff's house through backside off-screen.

When SpongeBob is being grated by cheese graters, his eyes come out the graters twice.

When Mrs. Puff yells, "Extra Credit!," runs to SpongeBob with his unicycle, and leads him back into the classroom, the unicycle disappears.

When Mrs. Puff imagines the chaos and destruction caused by SpongeBob driving, it shows the news report. It says "Live," but at the end the of the news report, when SpongeBob runs over the reporter, the reporter says "let's not use that take..."

It clearly says live...

The cliff that the police car is parked next to disappears in the next shot.

When SpongeBob goes to Boaty, he has casts on his head. In the next shot when he is out the window, his head casts disappear from here and for the rest of the episode.

The accident phone number where it says "accident" is misspelled as "accidente." This is actually a Spanish word that translates to "accident." However, this is not an error in the Spanish dub of this episode.